Aging and living in urban US

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an H-E-N-D

H-E-N-D? Human-engineered, natural disaster. Hurricane Sandy. I would have called it a man-made natural disaster, but that sounded too oxymoronic (however, true).

And it would confuse the morons who don’t believe that humans are at least, in part, responsible for climate change. Ok, I don’t have to be insulting, but let’s just leave it like this: it has to better for the planet if we don’t dump toxins in the oceans or let toxins loose into the atmosphere. If we were as gentle with the world as we expect our loved ones to be with us, then maybe we wouldn’t need a political-scientific war of words.

Since I am not good at the big theories, let me tell you about a small, unintended, consequence of H-E-N-D Sandy: Dad’s care.

With power outages predicted, one of Dad’s children or children-in-law needed to be with him, even though he had a home health aide. Why? What if he fell, or became confused and agitated, and the phones were down, how would the health aide — who cannot leave his side — get help? What if, as happened, no one comes to relieve the home health aide because everyone is stranded? One home health aide couldn’t leave for 60 hours; no one could get to Dad’s house to relieve her and she had no way of getting home. We needed to be there to let her sleep and help with cooking and minding Dad. And Dad needs minding. Especially at night.

We are lucky. Dad didn’t lose power. We live nearby. We married good, kind and loving people who were willing to treat Dad like their own dad and take shifts in Dad’s care. I slept there twice; HOSOB once. POB and SOS were there during the day. SOB had to be in her hospital because other hospitals were evacuating very sick people to her ICU.

But so many of the elderly or infirm in this country are not so lucky. Their children don’t live nearby. They can’t come to the rescue in a disaster.

I bet a lot of people went without medications, good food, and proper hygiene during these past three or so days. And I bet they were frightened.

So, don’t think about this on a global scale. Think about your neighbors, whether they are elderly or the children who couldn’t fly to their parents’ rescue. Then, think about your gas guzzler car, your over-processed food, your bottled water. Then, consider how you (and I) contributed to the crazy weather patterns that made H-E-N-D Sandy an epic disaster.